Polling Quick Hits:
Florida:
It feels like most people had a chance to take their potshots at the Foster McCollum White poll of the Sunshine state over the weekend. FHQ does not have that much add. In a year with comparatively tight polling variation, this poll is as volatile as they come relative to the existing information to which we are all privy. No Florida poll has shown Mitt Romney over 49% and no poll has shown Barack Obama under 41% there. This poll violated both of those precedents. It is an outlier. Nothing more, nothing less.

Michigan:
In the other Foster McCollum White poll released today, things also favored Romney but not nearly to the extent in Michigan as they were in Florida. The former Massachusetts governor leads the president by nearly four points in the Great Lakes state. Romney has not led Michigan by anything greater than two percentage points all year, but the two candidates' shares of the vote are at least within range of where other polling firms have found each of them in 2012. We just haven't seen this particular combination before. Perhaps more importantly, the poll -- outlier or not -- shifted Michigan back into the Toss Up Obama category in the FHQ weighted averages.

New York:
The Empire state is like Oklahoma yesterday. But instead of being comfortably red, New York is safely blue.

Virginia:
On a day that outside of the Siena poll out of New York ran against the president, the latest PPP survey of Virginia was the lone bright spot in an electorally consequential state. Of course, the poll was not without good new for Romney. Though Obama remained stationary compared to the early July poll from the Raleigh-based firm, Romney crept up three points, closing the gap to five. This one is consistent with other PPP surveys of Virginia and is well within range of where most other polls have shown the race, but it is a little more on the blue side of things than some other recent polls in the commonwealth.

Wisconsin:

Changes (August 21)

State

Before

After

Michigan

Lean Obama

Toss Up Obama

Wisconsin

Lean Obama

Toss Up Obama

Earlier in the day, Public Policy Polling also released a survey of Wisconsin that was in the field at the same time as the Virginia poll above. Unlike Virginia, however, the results indicated a shift toward Romney/Ryan in the time since the Badger state representative was named to the Republican ticket. The bounce -- post-Ryan -- in the survey pushed Romney into a lead that mirrored the previous Rasmussen poll in Wisconsin and also moved the state into the Toss Up Obama category. This is fairly meaningful even if Wisconsin had been tracking in this direction for the last week and a half or more. If you will recall our inaugural 2012 electoral college post, FHQ mentioned that the way these averages are set up, movement to and from categories is typically representative of a lasting shift. Typically, though not always. Both Michigan and Missouri have hovered around the Lean/Toss Up line since July. This is not to suggest that when and/or if the supposed Ryan bounce recedes -- or at the very least polling settles down there -- Wisconsin will not hover in a way similar to Michigan/Missouri. Rather it means that Wisconsin has trended in a certain direction and has all the earmarks of a toss up state, but one at the moment where Wisconsin is more like New Hampshire than Florida. In other words, there is more distance for Romney to make up in the Badger state than in say Florida or neighboring Iowa.

...for now.

The margin in Florida contracted quite a bit so that it is now the closest state -- within a quarter of a point of being tied in FHQ's weighted averages. [North Carolina had been the closest.] The same was true in Michigan and Wisconsin as well. With the Missouri shift last week and now the two midwestern states added to the mix, the overall number of toss up states has increased to ten. Additionally, two of the three Lean Obama states that were on the Watch List below and were highlighted last week with the Michigan/Wisconsin move. [Nevada was the other one.]

This does not fundamentally change much of anything. The map is the exact same, but the Lean Obama category has shrunk by 26 electoral votes. [Both sides of the Lean category are, well, lean at this point.] The categorizations may have changed, but neither state (Michigan or Wisconsin) is particularly surprising as Toss Up state. And at this point anyway, both still favor the president in the FHQ averages as is the case for most (80%) of the other swing states. Romney still have to improve his standing in at least half of the swing states -- if not more if Florida and/or Ohio are in Obama's column -- to push to victory in the electoral vote tally.

But as we head into the convention phase of the campaign, we have a cluster of states worth eyeing as polls emerge during the coming weeks.

2 The numbers in the parentheses refer to the number of electoral votes a candidate would have if he won all the states ranked prior to that state. If, for example, Romney won all the states up to and including Ohio (all Obama's toss up states plus Ohio), he would have 272 electoral votes. Romney's numbers are only totaled through the states he would need in order to get to 270. In those cases, Obama's number is on the left and Romney's is on the right in italics.

3 Ohio is the state where Obama crosses the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidential election. That line is referred to as the victory line.

The Watch List remains the same but both Michigan and Wisconsin are now on the verge of moving into the Lean Obama category instead of out of the category and into the Toss Up area.

The Watch List1

State

Switch

Connecticut

from Strong Obama

to Lean Obama

Florida

from Toss Up Obama

to Toss Up Romney

Georgia

from Strong Romney

to Lean Romney

Michigan

from Toss Up Obama

to Lean Obama

Missouri

from Toss Up Romney

to Lean Romney

Nevada

from Lean Obama

to Toss Up Obama

New Hampshire

from Toss Up Obama

to Lean Obama

New Mexico

from Strong Obama

to Lean Obama

North Carolina

from Toss Up Romney

to Toss Up Obama

West Virginia

from Strong Romney

to Lean Romney

Wisconsin

from Toss Up Obama

to Lean Obama

1 Weighted Average within a fraction of a point of changing categories.